Attorney-turned-activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has captured more voters than any independent candidate since Ross Perot in 1996.
Democrats worry about Kennedy’s name recognition and its potential to pull votes from President Joe Biden. Republicans worry about his anti-establishment messaging and its potential to pull votes from former President Donald Trump.
However, according to the most recent polls, Kennedy is hardly pulling votes at all anymore. He’s seen his popularity collapse.
In FiveThirtyEight’s poll aggregate of the general election, Kennedy peaked at 10.7 percent on March 3. As recently as April 30, Kennedy was polling at 10.6 percent.
Then on June 6, Kennedy was polling at 9.3 percent, down 1.5 points from his peak. In a close race, the victor might win with an even lesser margin than that.
Biden and Trump saw their numbers remain stable. On June 7, Trump was polling at 41 percent, compared to 41.5 percent on April 30. During that same span of time, Biden went from 40.8 to 39.9.
Only Kennedy saw a swing of more than a full point… and he fell 1.5 points.
Kennedy fared even worse in the favorability department.
11 months ago, Kennedy was pulling a net favorability rating of +24.6 points in FiveThirtyEight’s poll aggregate. On July 7 of last year, he was viewed unfavorably by only 22.7 percent of respondents… and viewed favorably by more than twice as many.
Now, Kennedy is viewed unfavorably by a whopping 42 percent, compared to only 35.2 percent viewing him favorably. Kennedy lost the plus sign on his favorability rating sometime in mid-May, and he has yet to earn it back.
Kennedy, a former Democrat, was originally running a primary campaign against Biden. In some polls, he was grabbing about 20 percent of the primary electorate, but he stood very little chance of unseating an incumbent president.
On May 8, Kennedy was sitting at a relative peak of favorability… and then he disclosed the presence of a parasitic worm in his brain.
By the end of the month, he saw his favorability rating plunge by a net 9.3 points, although he’d slipped from relative peaks in the past, too.